Man becomes what he chooses to be
Living life as a human being requires virtues. One must choose and perform the right actions to improve his life in the present and the future.
Integrity is a human virtue.
The man of integrity is convinced that he cannot allow any contradiction to stand between the beliefs he professes and his choices of action. He values his own psychology and will not allow himself to feel emotions that blur his vision or throw him off track. The man of integrity has a profound need for his ideas to adhere to what is good for him. He strongly believes that he will become what he chooses to be. Thus, the man of integrity takes his ideas seriously. He strives to integrate them by means of logic, so he can be certain that he is valuing the right things.
A breach of integrity shows him that something is wrong. It proves that his desires may not be in the right place. So he corrects himself by understanding his emotions and his place in the world. The man of integrity strives to believe in the ideas he claims to hold, continuously refining them through his thinking. He seeks to align his ideas with his actions in ways that truly benefit him as a human being. He who has integrity will strive not to be a hypocrite.
The hypocrite claims to uphold ideas he does not truly believe in and makes no effort to identify where he has gone wrong. He lives a half-life— a life that may be ok, but not great. He does that by choice.
The task of correcting oneself is fundamentally up to each person. One cannot think for another. I do not like using words such as “optimism” or “pessimism” in regard to people. A fact of life is that people choose, and we cannot choose for others. At most, we judge the choices of others alongside our own.
The man who makes good choices strives to be better. If he truly is, he has earned the good things he got by being so. He can then encourages others by example and by the knowledge he has gained in building his own character and life. Only in this way may others consider him a person from whom they can learn something, if they make that choice.